Monthly Archives: April 2014

We met yesterday to review the first CCT event and put in place plans for the next.

All of us are very pleased indeed with the turnout, interaction and feedback on the 17th April. Over the moon in fact.

It is great to know that there are so many people in Southend with an interest in critical theory, and ready to come down the pub to engage with it. Please tell your friends about us. We welcome anyone who wants to contribute or just listen (over a pint) to what critical theory has to say about Southend related issues.

We will be publishing a summary document of the first event on this site in the next few weeks. More to follow.

Re. next event

There will most probably be a change to the initial advertised May 25th date for the Kursaal as Heterotopia special. We want Angie Voela (from UEL) to come down and do her stuff on Foucault to complement artist and curator Jane Millar’s fascinating proposed project on the amusement park – and possibly another guest to be confirmed.

We also have a guest DJ on the night – Twig the Wonder Kid 🙂

Hope you can all make this free event – will keep you all updated about new date and times here, twitter and on FB.

Thanks to everyone who came along last night. A really good turn out and thoroughly enjoyable. Interesting mix of critical theory and beer ;-). We’ll be back on Sunday 25th May for a special on The Kursaal. More details to follow.

Before Thursday evening’s first ever CCT event upstairs at the Railway we’d like to share some of Iry Hor’s specially commissioned photographs of the various territorializations and deterritorializations found in Southend’s urban spaces.

The photographs focus on the contrasts between the new college/university sites and the so-called gateway to Southend, including Heath House (below) and the old derelict college building nearby in Canarvon Road.

Stuart is mostly inspired by his love of open air, spaces and places. His interest in sound and the natural rhythms and routines of everyday life have shaped the methodology of his work, which revolves around noises and sounds which he finds, records and processes. He loves to travel, near and far, and the recordings he makes become a document, a sound memory, of his time spent in each place. He often works with individuals or groups to record new sets of sounds and over the years has built up a large archive of recordings which he draws upon to make songs, soundtracks to films and art installations. In this way of working he tries to make sense of the world he lives in and his place within it. Simultaneously, the creations and experiences of others end up intrinsically embedded in his work, creating a rich texture of layers, representing his life and those he as encountered along the way.

9-9.20pm: Sounds by Stuart Bowditch

9.20-9.30pm: Introduction to CCT by Giles Tofield (Chair)

The Talks

9.30pm

Deleuze, Contagion & the New Brighton
Tony D Sampson (UEL)

This talk will engage with the ideas of Gilles Deleuze in order to grasp how urban space, place and time might emerge. Firstly, we need to rethink the idea of Southend as a holistic entity (e.g. Southend as a whole community) and instead encounter the urban space as a multiplicity. The focus therefore needs to shift away from wholes and essential properties to consider local interactions and singularities that have the capacity and tendency to spill over into urban space (for good and bad). The talk will include a collaborative venture with the photographer Iry Hor whose work captures the assemblages of real Southend.

10-10.15pm: short break

10.15pm

Bourdieu, Habit and Social Space
Andrew Branch (UEL)

Morrissey once asked ‘When you want to live, how do you start? Where do you go? Who do you need to know? This talk will answer these political questions by illustrating how Pierre Bourdieu’s work can illuminate our understanding of how habitual behaviour forms, structures our sense of entitlement and frames our occupation of space and place. Using examples familiar to people living in Southend and its adjacent areas, the talk will conclude by exploring how transformation occurs, both at the individual and collective level.

UPDATE UPDATE – We are probably moving this second event into June. More to follow…

Just as we approach our first CCT event on the 17th April, plans for the second event are already afoot. We have pencilled in 25th May as a date to talk to the artist and curator Jane Millar about her proposal to curate new artworks that respond to the history and presence of the Kursaal Amusement Park.

Another aim of this project is to exhibit under-represented British cultural movements in contemporary festival installation work, robotics, automata and sideshows. Sounds fascinating.

At this moment we are talking with various theorists about using Foucault’s heterotopia as a way to critically intervene into Jane’s work on the Kursaal. Something along the lines of the amusement park as part of a juxtaposition of alternative spaces along the Essex coastline.